The Bright Side and Dark Side of Performance Expectations: The Role of Organizational Culture and the Impact on Employee Performance and Wellbeing
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Informa UK Limited
Abstract
Organizational culture has the potential to contribute to employee performance and wellbeing when it creates reasonable expectations and provides employees with the necessary skills and other resources to succeed. A wide range of stakeholders inside and outside the organization influence performance expectations, which largely revolve around workload (the quantity, quality and timeliness of the tasks they are entrusted with), customer service, innovation, and internal relationships. Given the relative lack of attention paid in prior research to performance expectations as an element of organizational culture, our qualitative study sought to investigate the sources and types of expectations of employees and the impact on their actual performance and wellbeing. We focused on the finance industry, which has received considerable criticism in various countries in terms of the undue pressure exerted on employees and the effects on their stress levels. It was therefore surprising to find that most of our New Zealand participants felt that expected performance levels were reasonable, apart from the extra but temporary demands created by the Covid-19 pandemic, and that their wellbeing was a genuine concern to their employers. We signal new research directions to explore how organizations can shape cultures where performance expectations lead to good results and staff wellbeing.Description
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International Studies of Management & Organization, ISSN: 0020-8825 (Print); 1558-0911 (Online), Informa UK Limited, 54(3), 218-237. doi: 10.1080/00208825.2024.2320580
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© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.